US Finalises Stricter Green Card Lottery Rules, Passport Now Mandatory for Applicants
The United States has finalised new regulations for the Diversity Immigrant Visa Programme, commonly known as the Green Card lottery, introducing stricter identity verification requirements. Effective April 10, 2026, the rule mandates that applicants provide valid, unexpired passport details and upload a scanned copy of the passport’s biographic and signature pages while submitting their electronic entry. The US Department of State published the regulation in the Federal Register under the title “Visas: Enhancing Vetting and Combatting Fraud in the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program,” aiming to strengthen the integrity of the widely used immigration pathway.
The Diversity Visa Programme allocates up to 55,000 immigrant visas annually through a random selection process for individuals from countries with historically low immigration rates to the US. Authorities say the new passport requirement is designed to curb long-standing issues such as fraudulent entries, duplicate applications, and submissions by third parties without applicants’ knowledge. While similar rules were introduced in 2019 and later struck down in 2022 over procedural concerns, officials have now reinstated the requirement following proper rulemaking procedures. Limited exemptions will apply to stateless individuals or those unable to obtain passports due to government restrictions.
The updated regulation will apply starting with the DV-2027 lottery, for which the registration period has been delayed and is yet to be announced. Additional technical changes include replacing the term “gender” with “sex” and “age” with “date of birth” to improve data accuracy. Meanwhile, Indian nationals remain ineligible for the programme due to consistently high migration numbers exceeding the eligibility threshold, alongside countries such as China, South Korea, Canada, and Pakistan. The rule follows a temporary suspension of the programme in December 2025 after a fatal incident involving a past visa recipient, underscoring the renewed focus on security and vetting.
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